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To Flip a Flop

When the curtain fell at the Foxwoods Theatre on Saturday evening, it marked the end not only of the three-year run of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” but of a theatrical Book of Job. The producers, creators, and cast suffered technical challenges; runaway costs; delays; lawsuits; critical Schadenfreude; a gleeful cataloguing of the show’s woes by the press (most notoriously by the Post columnist Michael Riedel, who once boasted, “I’ve got my foot on its neck, and I’m having too much fun to take it off”); a bitter battle for creative control that led to the ouster of its director, Julie Taymor, during previews; and devastating injuries (a fractured toe and foot, two broken wrists, a concussion, a fall from an elevated set piece to a concrete floor thirty feet below that left an actor with cracked vertebrae and a skull fracture, and, most recently, a dancer’s leg crushed by a trap door).

When it finally opened, in June of 2011, after an unprecedented six months of previews and a three-week hiatus during which it was dramatically reconfigured, “Spider-Man” did manage to make money—a lot of it. Its ticket sales exceeded two hundred million dollars, making it the sixteenth-highest-grossing show in Broadway history. But with a seventy-five-million-dollar capitalization (that is, the money put up by investors, which typically totals ten to fifteen million dollars for a Broadway musical), plus weekly operating expenses exceeding a million dollars, the show needed to be a smash to turn a profit.

In his behind-the-scenes memoir, “Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History,” Glen Berger, who co-wrote the show’s book (initially with Taymor, and, after her departure, with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa), recalled that when Michael Cohl and Jeremiah Harris became the show’s new producers, in 2010, they knew that “even with every single performance sold out, it could still take over four years to break even.” Instead, “Spider-Man” has closed after months of flagging ticket sales, at a loss that could reach sixty million dollars, according to “investors and executives” who spoke with Patrick Healy, of the Times, in November.

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In its failure to turn a profit, “Spider-Man” is not unusual: most Broadway shows lose money. In their 2010 book “Stage Money: The Business of the Professional Theater,” Tim Donahue and Jim Patterson report that less than a third of commercial (as opposed to not-for-profit) productions recouped their investors’ money from the 1999-2000 to 2007-2008 seasons. Three hundred and forty-three commercial productions were mounted, grossing revenues in excess of seven billion dollars, but only a handful made big money: twenty hits (Taymor’s triumph, “The Lion King,” and Mel Brooks’s “The Producers” among them) accounted for more than sixty per cent of the total revenue.

Of course, even commercial theatre isn’t driven strictly by profit. Donahue and Patterson offer the example of August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean.” When the 2004 production seemed financially doomed, a single investor ponied up a million dollars to make sure that it could go forward; she didn’t necessarily expect to earn back her investment, but she thought Wilson’s play deserved a Broadway audience. The 1971 production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” was a notorious financial failure. In her book about the director and producer Harold Prince, Carol Ilson quotes Prince discussing a suggestion from the choreographer Michael Bennett that they hire Neil Simon to fix the show’s book. “I said, ‘Neil Simon couldn’t help with this book the way this book should be, Michael,’ “ Prince recalls, “But what he was saying was, ‘let’s not have a flop.’ And the truth of the matter is, I didn’t care that much. I wanted that ‘Follies.’ “

And then there are what Donahue and Patterson describe as the “intangible, psychic returns.” In “The Producers,” Leo Bloom, the accounting nebbish turned Broadway fraudster, imagines them like this:

I wanna be a producer

And sleep until half-past two

I wanna be a producer

And say, “You, you, you, not you”

I wanna be a producer

Wear a tux on opening nights!

I wanna be a producer

And see my name “Leo Bloom” in lights!

Still, one can’t help but look at the odds of making real money on Broadway and wonder whether producers aren’t as impractical as the kids from Toledo or Peoria who emerge from the Port Authority Bus Terminal with a couple of suitcases and dreams of stardom. (I was nearly one of those kids, but in college I realized that I would never learn to dance, came down with a permanent case of stage fright, and belatedly heeded the warning of my reliably frank high-school drama teacher, who, upon hearing that I wanted to see if I could make it as an actress, said, “Elizabeth, I think you should write.”)

Donahue and Patterson argue that while investing in Broadway is a risky proposition, “the potential for profit on Broadway is commensurate with that level of risk.”

“It’s a business like venture capital,” Donahue told me. “It’s high stakes, high risk, very high return if you hit it.”

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The good news for Cohl and Harris, and for any producer who doesn’t carry off a success in New York, is that a Broadway closing night isn’t a show’s last chance to make money. A Broadway flop can spawn a tour, a new professional production in another city, or decades of stock, regional, and amateur productions. Some even consider this as a formula for success. Ken Davenport, a producer on and off Broadway, told me, “If you can make a show successful here and then distribute it around the world you can often make more money that way.” (Betsy Morais wrote in May about a class that Davenport teaches called Broadway Investing 101: “Davenport spoke so convincingly about why to give money to the theatre that it began to feel as though he were selling his students on the idea as much as he was teaching about it.”)

To understand how producers (and their investors) can make money after failing on Broadway, it helps to know a bit about the legal structure of a Broadway production. When a producer options a show, he or she has the right to mount a Broadway production, and, often, a tour and international productions. In addition, producers typically negotiate subsidiary rights, which give them a share of revenue from future theatrical productions, television and film versions, and merchandise—for some period of time. According to the agreement governing their partnership, producers and investors typically split profits fifty-fifty after a show recoups; investors are also usually entitled to a portion of the producer’s cut from subsidiary rights for the duration of the partnership (typically eighteen years).

Touring theatre is lucrative: over the past decade or so, according to Donahue and Patterson, shows on the road have consistently earned more in annual gross ticket sales than shows on Broadway. A show doesn’t have to perform well in New York to make money on the road, where producers typically scale back to reduce operating costs. “Little Women” lost seven million dollars on Broadway, in 2005, but made it back on tour, according to Donahue and Patterson. The 2003 flop “Seussical,” which lost ten and a half million dollars, was also a hit on the road. “All the touring producers believe that being able to say ‘live from Broadway’ is an important claim,” Donahue told me; the show doesn’t need to have succeeded there.

For a traditional tour, a show needs to be able to move nimbly between theatres of various sizes and technical capabilities. “Spider-Man” ’s effects, which rely on sophisticated technology and require a great deal of space and careful calibration, would make such a tour challenging. Cohl told me that he was “working on something” along those lines, but “that chances are less then fifty-fifty” that it will pan out. He confirmed plans, however, to mount an arena tour, which he hopes will start in 2016. An arena tour, playing to large stadiums, would allow enough space to house the spectacle (and the equipment that makes it possible).

By e-mail, Donahue noted some of the difficulties of such an enterprise: a massive set that could be reassembled whole in each new venue to support the show’s computerized flying system, as well as the challenge of filling massive stadiums night after night. He suggested it would be “highly difficult, as difficult or more difficult than the original production.” And, of course, such a tour would require additional capital. “Who will invest in ‘Spider-Man’ now?” he asked.

Cohl countered that people have expressed interest in investing and pointed to several recent family-oriented arena shows that have successfully drawn audiences, including the “Marvel Universe LIVE!” show and “Walking with Dinosaurs.”

In addition to touring, shows that flop on Broadway can keep making money by putting down roots in new cities—London, or Chicago, or, in recent decades, northern Europe, Asia, or South America. In December, Patrick Healy reported in the Times that Broadway offerings, including flops like “Murder Ballad” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” are gaining popularity in Seoul. Indeed, Cohl told me that he is looking into opportunities to export “Spider-Man” around the world, with progress furthest along in Germany.

But first, he and Harris plan to open “Spider-Man” in Las Vegas. Cohl declined to comment on reports that Steve Wynn was interested in bringing the show to his Encore Theatre. But Cohl told me that he is talking to “several parties” about a possible venue. He hopes to finalize a deal in the next sixty days—and says that “Spider-Man” could open in Vegas eighteen months after that.

Vegas seems, in some ways, like a more natural fit for “Spider-Man” than New York was. The show has always been more spectacle than musical—Taymor used to refer to it as a “circus-rock-and-roll-drama.” Or, as Cohl put it: “We’re a rock-oriented family show that happened to have been in a Broadway theatre.”

But as a post-Broadway destination Vegas has proven fickle. While “Mamma Mia!” had a popular six-year run there, other recent Broadway transfers, including “Hairspray” and the much-hyped “Avenue Q” have fizzled. Donahue pointed out that “Spider-Man” ’s Vegas competition would include Cirque du Soleil’s shows, which, he said, “do all the kind of stuff that ‘Spider-Man’ does, but they do it better.” He also noted that new Cirque shows have struggled, “probably because they’ve oversaturated the market.”

Cohl strongly objected to this comparison. “Our flying has a different purpose than Cirque, and we have a different show,” he said. He went on, later, “We think we’ve established a brand, and we think it’s a show that people like.”

He said that he doesn’t think future productions will experience the financial challenges “Spider-Man” faced in New York: he estimated each new long-term production, like the one in Vegas, will require an investment of twenty to twenty-two million dollars—less than a third of what the show cost in New York. Weekly running costs will be slashed by more than half, to somewhere in the five-hundred-thousand-dollar range.

One other possible afterlife for a Broadway flop is licensing for stock, regional, and amateur productions. In addition to its success on the road, “Seussical” has become a staple in this kind of theatre, spawning, as of 2009, seven hundred productions each year, according to Variety. “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” closed in 1982 after three performances, but by the time its original investors’ partnership agreement expired, in 2000, it had recouped their capital on the strength of its popularity with “light-opera companies, community theaters, and student groups,” Donahue and Patterson write.

Small venues seem an unlikely match for “Spider-Man.” Some mega musicals now exist in scaled-down versions appropriate for high schools or community theatres—for example, Musical Theater International licenses a “School Edition” of “Les Misérables.” But even without a barricade, “Les Mis” has popular songs and characters beloved by theatre fans. It’s hard to imagine “Spider-Man” in the absence of high-tech aerial stunts. Cohl acknowledged that “in terms of what we really mean when we say ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,’ there’s no way.” But he said the he thinks the script and story might live on in a version that could appeal to this market.

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In his “Spider-Man” memoir, Berger relates how he and the choreographer Danny Ezralow treated the Foxwoods Theatre with “sage smoke from a smudge-stick,” and how Ezralow petitioned the show’s general managers to pay for a “Ritual Maven” who would conduct a “Success Blessing”—“a common-enough Broadway line item,” Berger writes.

Theatre is a business, yes, but it’s a weird one. While we shouldn’t celebrate hubris or financial mismanagement, I’m glad that we live in a universe where people periodically throw tens of millions of dollars at Julie Taymor and ask her to transform a familiar commercial property into something artistically innovative. One “Lion King” for every “Spider-Man” is a pretty good batting average.